Since the New Deal, Republicans have been on the wrong side of every issue of concern
to ordinary Americans; Social Security, the war in Vietnam, equal rights,
civil liberties, church- state separation, consumer issues, public education, reproductive
freedom, national health care, labor issues, gun policy, campaign-finance
reform, the environment
and tax fairness. No political party could
remain so consistently wrong by accident.
The only rational conclusion is
that, despite their cynical "family values" propaganda, the Republican Party
is a criminal conspiracy to betray the interests of the American people
in
favor of plutocratic and corporate interests, and absolutist religious groups.

Why? Because they're evil GOP bastards!

Exposing the ugly truth
about the Republican Party's diabolical plot to replace
constitutional democracy with an oligarchic
fascist theocracy...

It's the only rational explanation!

Why does the Republican Party zealously pursue policies so obviously counter to the
best interests of ordinary Americans?

In a democracy, voting requires a certain level of intellectual engagement by the
electorate. The Founding Fathers assumed that citizens would possess a minimum
level of knowledge of the issues of the day, and why not? Literacy was very high
even during the Colonial era. Libraries and newspapers were common in American
cities, and the postal service made distribution of printed material cheap and
easily accessible. What the Founders could not have imagined was an American
political party that traded exclusively in lies, or a media devoted to a concept
like "fake news" (aka right-wing propaganda). No, these are phenomena unique
to our own cynical times, as are citizens who would cast their vote for a vulgar,
dishonest and ignorant con-man.

In their naiveté, the Founders
assumed that the Electoral College would protect the nation they created from the
rise of a sleazy demagogue riding the passions of the ignorant and insane. But
our institutions have now failed us. When Benjamin Franklin was asked if the
Constitutional Convention had created a monarchy or a republic, he answered, "A
republic, if you can keep it." With the election of Donald Trump as president,
our generation may have failed in its responsibility as citizens to "keep it."

Wake-Up Progressives!Where Do We Go From Here?
By Jack Hughes

As the shock of the 2016 election results sink-in
and the reality of total Republican control of the federal government along with
an increasing majority of states, progressives are now, at long last, forced
to assess what has happened and plan where to go from here.

We must
recognize that the Democratic Party is now utterly and completely powerless to
prevent Republicans from steam-rolling their radical agenda through Congress.
Anyone expecting Senate Democrats to filibuster Republican legislation still doesn't
appreciate the nature of the Republican opposition or their current position
of total political domination. After abusing the parliamentary tactic for the
eight years of the Obama administration, Republicans will eliminate the filibuster
the moment it becomes politically inconvenient.

Since the Gingrich
Revolution, Republicans have not been the "loyal opposition." They have violated
every norm and every tradition -- at least since the Civil War -- of American
politics and civil behavior. They have completely abandoned actual policy
and governance in favor of shameless pandering to know-nothings and kooks, and
using egregiously dishonest propaganda. For instance, every time Republicans
use the terms "tax cut" and "balanced budget" in the same sentence they are
knowingly committing political fraud. Right-wing propaganda has been so dishonest
-- and so pervasive -- that the Republican base has become immune to historical
facts, scientific data and rational discourse.

For Republicans,
politics has become total political war. Democrats have not understood this
simple fact, which is why they -- we -- have continued to lose. What is meant by
political total war? Consider it a cold civil war, or as Bill Maher described
it, a slow-moving coup.

Against the Democrats' traditional politics
of issue advertising and get-out-the-vote efforts, Republicans have deployed
a generation-long saturation campaign of dishonest propaganda that bears the hallmarks
of a domestic psychological warfare operation; vote suppression and "voter
caging" to reduce Democratic voter turnout; extreme gerrymandering to concentrate
Democratic majorities into fewer numbers of congressional and legislative
districts; and naked politicization of the courts.

Due to the Republicans'
"scientific" gerrymandering, Democrats routinely receive millions more
votes, but are consistently consigned to minority status in the House of Representatives.

It gets worse. There is every indication -- since exit
polling is the only means to verify election results in the era of paperless electronic
voting -- of extensive Republican election theft. Does anyone seriously
believe that the radicals who engage in sleazy anti-democratic vote suppression
in full public view would balk at tampering with election results behind
closed doors?

Yet Democratic Party officials -- even the stunned
losing candidates -- refuse to even consider the possibility of election
theft as they passively watch predicted victories unexpectedly and mysteriously
transformed into defeats where Republicans control the vote counts. The
ramifications are far too serious to ignore.

These measures, i.e.,
extreme gerrymandering, vote-suppression and suspicious deviations between exit
polls and official results that always favor Republicans, have led to de facto minority rule. Minority rule is tyranny
-- the real kind -- not the phony hyperbole that Republicans dishonestly bleat
about whenever a Democrat manages to get elected.

What is the objective
of all these sleazy anti-democratic tactics? In short, the establishment of
corporate feudalism; to reduce the American middle class to low-paid, politically
powerless peasants. The Big Money interests that finance the Republican Party
and its propaganda machine don't love guns or hate abortion or despise
homosexuals. Those issues are just a means to mobilize the rubes into voting against
their own economic interests.

The middle-class fools who
loyally vote Republican year after year have been brainwashed into mindlessly
blaming Democrats for their decline in prosperity while our country has adopted
“conservative” low-tax (for the rich) low-service (for everybody else) economic
policies. Enjoy your toll roads and sky-rocketing tuition rates and health-care
costs, suckers. Republicans are going to try to steal your Social Security
and Medicare next.
So where do we go from here?
First, progressives must realize that 21st Century politics is now primarily
a propaganda war to capture the limited attention span of low-information voters.
The plutocrats have invested billions of dollars in a vertical network
of foundations, policy institutes and think tanks, i.e., propaganda
shops, to carefully craft cleverly deceptive over-simplifications, half-truths,
distortions, and outright lies, along with a horizontal network of blogs,
websites, radio shows and cable-TV channels to disseminate them. There is
no similar advocacy structure for the interests of the poor and middle classes.
This must change starting with -- at a minimum -- central coordination of consistent,
coherent, and most of all sustained, policy messaging for progressives
to deliver with a unified voice and common rhetoric. Simplicity and repetition
is the key to successful propaganda.

Second, Democrats are still
bringing a book bag to a gun fight. The news media won't risk being branded
as "biased" by exposing Republican lies. It's up to the Democrats to do it --
which means not just politely refuting dishonest Republican talking points -- but
explicitly shaming right-wing PR flacks and politicians as "dirty goddam liars"
by name and to their faces on national TV. Republicans must be forced on the
defensive.

Third, there is no reason for voters to turn out for "corporate
Democrats" or "Conserva-Dems" owned by the same lobbyists and special
interests that own the Republicans. The era of Blue Dog Democrats is over. Democrats
must be divorced completely from special interests, freeing themselves to
boldly inform voters that they've been deceived and screwed by Republican politicians
and their oligarch masters. Democratic politicians can no longer simply
present themselves to voters as "not Republicans." It's political suicide.
Democrats must provide a truly progressive alternative.

Fourth, street
protests accomplish nothing when they are not tied to specific political
objectives. In fact, they are often counter-productive when undisciplined and surge
out of control -- used in right-wing propaganda to attack progressives and
progressive ideals. Far more productive would be if those protestors dedicated
five dollars a month -- or more -- to the Democratic Party and volunteered their
time at the local party level. An influx of idealistic activists would re-build
the Democratic Party into a more aggressive -- and much more progressive --
political party.

These strategies must be enacted immediately, starting
at the state party level -- especially in Red States -- and in time
to affect the 2018 mid-term elections. Failure to do so will mean further Republican
entrenchment, making it even more difficult to oust them from power. Success
won't be immediate, but sooner or later, consistent and sustained progressive
messaging will begin to penetrate the political consciousness of America's
low-info voters.

The time for timid, apologetic, progressivism
is done. Only aggressive "Mad Dog Democrats" can reverse the current Republican
strangle-hold on American politics and restore prosperity and justice to America.

The most important consideration in total political war is
to recognize the fact that we're engaged in one. Even in the "post-factual" environment
Republicans have manufactured, there is no more powerful political weapon
than the truth. If America is to survive as a liberal democracy, progressives
must make Republicans choke on it.